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Brand comparison studies show that there are differences between the COVID vaccines. But if one is unsafe, so is the other one.

Two studies showed that the Moderna vaccine was both safer and more effective on nearly all metrics. Yet the real-life record-level data in the Czech Republic shows the opposite. What's going on?

Steve Kirsch

Oct 16

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The vaccines sink or swim together. There was no significant mortality difference between the brands. If one falls, the other goes with it.

Executive summary

Two papers published in peer-reviewed medical journals show that the COVID vaccines brands are not the same in terms of efficacy or safety. To my surprise, they showed that the Moderna vaccine was superior in both aspects.

I find that hard to believe, so now we have a mystery on our hands: which data do you believe?

I can tell you from dealing with all the vaccine injured that Moderna is causing much more pain and suffering than Pfizer is. No question about it.

We have other indicators from other reliable sources that Moderna is more deadly, such as the Takada study, the Czech Republic data (population over 11M), the Fraiman paper, and more (see the list here).

How do we resolve the differences?

It would be great to collaborate with the authors of the study to try to get to the bottom of the reality disconnect, but I’ve reached out to the first author and I’ve just been ignored, so this doesn’t seem to be a priority.

And we can’t examine the data and reproduce the research because it’s all secret.

Here’s what we know from the papers:

There were minor, if any differences in COVID mortality between the two brands: 11% favoring Moderna, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant due to the low number of deaths (see Table 2),. I’m not surprised at this. This means that the large 30% higher Moderna ASMR we saw between brands in the Czech Republic could NOT have been caused by difference in vaccine effectiveness since we’re talking a 10% effect on roughly 14% who died of COVID which is just a 1.4% difference. They must have been caused by the vaccine itself, or some confounder that nobody can figure out.
The paper didn’t detect any significant difference in non-COVID all-cause mortality which means if we find from another study that either vaccine increases your non-COVID all-cause mortality, the other one does too. They are both in the same boat, tied together at the hip. They either sink or swim together. Of the results in the paper, this one (buried in Figure S3) was the most surprising. See the Supplementary Appendix.
We don’t know if the differences between brands were due to increased risk or decreased risk because we don’t have a reliable control. In other words, all the risk differences between the brands could be because Moderna was bad and Pfizer was worse.
There are statistically significant differences in several very serious adverse events. These should be assumed to be causal until proven otherwise. In other words, if you believe these papers, then you shouldn’t believe the CDC, the FDA, and NASEM because all of them say vaccines can’t be causing the effects that the papers show they are. This means, unless proven otherwise, that the vaccines are causing these events. They are not just “correlation.”
Pfizer was worse in all the effectiveness categories they looked at (infections, symptoms, hospitalization, ICU, and death). All of these differences were statistically significant (except for death).
We should be studying other SAEs, not just the ones in the study, for evidence of causality and warn the public. This is a great method for proving causality. It would enable the FDA and CDC to be able to definitively state that these serious injuries are caused by the vaccine so the vaccine injured can be compensated for their injuries.
The average age was 69 years old. There were 5.4 myocarditis or pericarditis events per 10,000 people (see Table 2) for the Pfizer vaccine That’s a rate of 1 event per 1,800 people which is 54 cases per 100,000. This is nearly 100X the rate the CDC claims for that age group and it’s higher than they claim for teenagers where the rates are the highest. So someone is not telling you the truth here.

Background

In late 2021, Harvard Professor Barbra A Dickerman did two brand-comparison studies between Pfizer and Moderna using data from the VA where they carefully matched both cohorts. One study was on safety, the other on efficacy. Both papers were published in 2022.

I was recently made aware of these papers after seeing a tweet from MIT Professor Retsef Levi who found it disturbing that there were statistically significant differences in serious adverse events (SAEs) between the groups. This observation shifts the burden of proof on the FDA and CDC to show that these SAEs were not caused by the vaccines.

Professor Jeffrey Morris then tried to gaslight Professor Levi with a post on X pointing out that the authors didn’t find the statistically significant differences to be meaningful. So what? It doesn’t change the fact that the precautionary principle of medicine dictates that we should presume, until proven otherwise, that these SAEs were caused by the vaccine.

The COVID vaccines clearly CAUSE very serious side effects which have never been acknowledged by the CDC or FDA. This is not correlation. This is CAUSATION. You cannot have a statistically significant difference in event rates when the cohorts are more perfectly matched than any randomized trial would ever be. Have the FDA or CDC ever acknowledged this? No, of course not. But there it is in the peer-reviewed literature! This should cause alarm bells to go off and the FDA should be warning the public that these vaccines are CAUSING these SAEs. The FDA should examine how it is possible that these SAEs weren’t identified before now and immediately use the same methodology to determine what other SAEs could also be caused by these vaccines. There are hundreds that should be examined with the same methodology.

The CDC and FDA are asleep at the wheel on this. They should look at each of the 770 serious adverse events that have already caused a safety signal in VAERS and use this methodology to determine which ones are causal. The brand comparison is the closest thing we have to doing a randomized trial.

Is the FDA working to protect the drug companies or the American public? We have the data. We have the methodology. Why is there no willingness to look at the data?

Professor Levi’s tweet

MIT Professor Retsef Levi recently called my attention to this paper and I followed to other papers written by the same author.

The gaslighting attempt by Professor Morris

Professor Morris pointed out that the authors poo-pooed the differences in the SAE rates. So what? That doesn’t make them just “go away.”

The safety paper

This looked at side effects. Many were statistically significant, i.e., “caused” by the vaccine until proven otherwise.

Comparative Safety of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 Vaccines in a Nationwide Cohort of US Veterans (July 2022)

The efficacy paper

This looked at reduction of infection, hospitalization, and death from COVID: Comparative Effectiveness of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273 Vaccines in U.S. Veterans (Jan 2022).

They assumed that COVID vaccines cannot impact non-COVID all-cause mortality. It was used as a negative control! In short, they assumed the COVID vaccine only impacts your ability to die from COVID. All these young people dying from myocarditis are dying from something else.

From the paper (emphasis mine)

To explore the possibility of residual confounding (e.g., by underlying health status or health care–seeking behavior), we used two negative outcome controls that are not directly affected by vaccination but for which the effect of vaccination might be similarly confounded.¹³ First, we evaluated the risk of symptomatic Covid-19 in the first 10 days after the first vaccine dose, during which no difference in risk between the vaccines is expected.¹^,² Second, we evaluated the risk of death from causes other than Covid-19 during the follow-up period.

Both of the negative controls can be affected by brand (I verified with Ryan Cole that within 48 hours these vaccines can negatively impact your immune system), but the second one is most definitely affected by brand.

As expected, we found a nearly identical risk pattern in the two vaccine groups in the evaluations of symptomatic Covid-19 in the first 10 days after the first vaccine dose (Fig. S2) and non–Covid-19–related death during follow-up (Fig. S3).

This means the COVID vaccines sink or swim together. If any vaccine is found to increase all-cause mortality, the other one must as well.

Another paper on safety

Comparative Risks of Potential Adverse Events Following COVID-19 mRNA Vaccination Among Older US Adults (Aug 2023)

This study looked at selected adverse events concluding Moderna had somewhat lower risk.

Summary

These papers were surprising because the Czech Republic data showed that Moderna was, by far, the deadlier vaccine. It would be great to apply the same analysis to the data, but I’m not holding my breath that anyone wants to resolve the conflict.

The papers showed that if one vaccine is unsafe (increasing non-COVID ACM), the other is too. We know from first responders that deaths climbed steeply after the shots rolled out. So that’s a great clue that both vaccines are deadly. According to the paper, the vaccines, if deadly, are equally deadly. So I don’t have a huge problem that the non-COVID ACM tracked, but this was surprising. The NCACM can still track and both vaccines can be unsafe and that is not inconsistent with what the paper found.

The papers showed that the CDC and FDA are likely not telling the truth about side effects caused by the vaccine since a statistically significant difference in near perfectly matched groups is highly unlikely to be caused by the vaccines themselves.

The hospitalization differences between vaccines are, in my opinion, more like to be caused by differences in safety (increasing risk for both vaccines) than by efficacy (reducing risk)

Someone needs to explain how the myocarditis rates can be 54 per 100,000 cases in those aged 69. We know that the rate is higher in kids than the elderly. This number is higher than the numbers claimed by the CDC for kids.

Bottom line: We now have conflicting data as to which vaccine is the most deadly. It appears that this depends on when and where you look. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Both vaccines are unsafe and ineffective and should be withdrawn from the market.